The Wood

This is what a crib looks like before jointing, planing, ripping, cross-cutting, shaping, joining, gluing, sanding, and finishing ... man, I get tired just typing all the things that still need to be done. Most of the wood on the left is cherry. Several of the boards are 8/4, for the legs and top rails. The wood on the right is curly maple, which will be used for the slats. All the wood is rough-sawn, so it's hard to tell what the boards will look like.

The first step in the process is to joint each board, which makes one face of the board flat. After jointing, I'll use the thickness planer to make the second face parallel to the first. One minor oversight: some of the boards are 7" wide, but my jointer is only 6" wide. Hmmm. Since it's not safe to cut rough boards on the table saw, I had to trim them down to 6" using the saber saw. I wish I had a band saw, but all in all the jointing went very well.

The third picture shows all the boards with one face jointed. The color of freshly cut cherry is surprising: it's more like a pink or salmon than the deep reddish brown you'd expect. I met a guy at a an art show that told me to leave the finished crib in the sun to get that color. You can see his stuff here.

The last picture shows the curly maple after jointing. Some of the boards are better than others, but it looks great on the edge. My plan is to rip the slats off the side of the boards, so the edge will be the visible part.

Crib Part 1 -- Shopping at Sharps

Last weekend we took the first step on our next project -- building a crib for our baby boy. The design is a three-in-one sleigh bed: it can be configured as a traditional crib, a toddler-size bed, or a regular twin-size bed. We're starting with a plan from InovateUSA, but we'll probably make style modifications. I ordered hardware from Rockler.

On Saturday we drove up to New Hampshire to buy wood from Sharp's Lumber. They were recommended to me by the guy I bought my jointer from. The company is run by Steve Sharps and his son Jamie, and you can't imagine two nicer guys. They spent a lot of time with us, letting us pick through piles of cherry and curly maple. Three generations of Sharps live on the property in houses they built themselves.

The top picture shows the inside of the lumber shop, which is filled floor-to-ceiling with amazing hardwood lumber. The second picture is the lumber shop from the outside. The third picture shows a big stack of gorgeous curly maple.

We also spent a nice afternoon in Ashland, NH.

XY

This morning we went for our second ultrasound, an experience that blows me away every time. The radiologist we got for this appointment was great -- he found the important structures very fast and spent time showing us other things. We could clearly see the four chambers of the heart beating. Amazing.

Well, we were kind of expecting it to be a girl, but all the old wives' tales failed us. Aliza wanted to keep it a secret for a little while, but once you've told everyone that you're going to find out the sex, it's pretty tough to deny them! Her father still wants it to be a surprise; although once her mother starts working on a blue sweater I think it's going to be tough.

Aliza says the baby looks like me. True, he does dance around in there quite a lot. I'm not so sure, though. Have you seen that nose? Hee hee.

First post

Have you ever used a manual "reel" lawn mower? As you push it through the uncut grass you eventually run out of momentum. So you stop, back up a few feet, build up some speed and plow ahead. I call this technique the lawnmower method, and it applies to many things in life, not just lawns!